A Personal Learning Network connects teachers to other individuals worldwide who can offer support, advice, feedback, and collaboration opportunities. It allows teachers to collect information from various websites and access it in one organized area so they can stay up-to-date on the latest information in their field. These tools work for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week. No longer do you have to perform the same search multiple times over the course of days, weeks, or months. These tools are always running this search for you and delivering to you any additions found. As your interests and requirements change so too can you edit your personal reference book.
Professional Development Standards for This Training
ISTE NETS 2008 for Teachers
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:
a. support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness.
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. Teachers:
a. demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations.
d. model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet. Things you can do with Delicious: Bookmark any site on the Internet, and get to it from anywhere
Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you're not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website. Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting. Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web
See what's hot with Delicious users by checking out our popular tags. By looking at popular bookmarks for a tag, you'll be able to discover the most interesting bookmarks on the topics you're most interested in. Browse bookmarks on just about anything from the best programming tips to the most popular travel sites, all in an easy to read format.
Create account: Username required and must be unique Password: alphanumeric (remember it)
After you complete account creation one option is:
Import bookmarks?? It will pull all the bookmarks from your computer and import them into Delicious for you Help > Need Tools - puts the icons on your menu bar for easy access Tags
Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Delicious to help you organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but you choose them yourself and they do not form a hierarchy
Another social bookmarking site used often by educators - allows you to "markup" or annotate right on top of websites you find and bookmark so that your notes go with your bookmark
SymbalooEDU
Alllows teachers to share websites, games, videos, images, etc. by creating online webmixes. Webmixes can be published and shared with colleagues, students, and parents. Teachers and students build a virtual textbook of sorts.
2. How to embed your SymbalooEDU webmix on your webpage:
Click on
Here you can fill in the webmix title, description, and any tags you want it to be associated with the webmix.
Choose to make your webmix public or private and click SHARE MY WEBMIX
You will then have the option to copy and paste the link that will take you to the webmix OR
You can Embed the webmix so it will appear on your webpage. To do this click
Then you must copy the long code and paste it in the Classroom news section of your webpage.
The code looks something like this: <iframe frameborder='0' noresize='noresize' src='http://edu.symbaloo.com/embed/team-techenvironment' name='_symFrame' width='920px' height='600px'></iframe> (you may see different numbers)
When you paste this in your Classroom news section you may wish to change the numbers on the width and height to 560 and 420.
Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. This tool allows scholarly citations for research / presentations.
To add a subscribe button to your toolbar:
-sign into Google Reader
-go to Settings, Reader ettings
-click on Goodies
-scroll to the bottom of the page
-drag subscribe to toolbar
This is a webpage that brings all the information you have requested to you on a continuous basis. Items like blogs, web searches, newspapers, delicious bookmarks from selected people and more are updated on your page as new material goes online.
Use this url to search for blogs on any topic / person
RSS
(Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. Will Richardson has included a page in his blog fully explaining RSS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?” So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that? Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver! That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. In a moment, I will describe how to get an RSS Reader. Subscribing to RSS feeds But first, to “subscribe” to a website or blog’s RSS feed simply means that you are telling that website or blog, “Yes please. Send me your story headlines.” It’s like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story. In order to subscribe to a website or blog’s RSS, all you have to do is click on an RSS symbol like one of those shown in the diagram above, or a text link of the words “Subscribe to our RSS feed” on the website or blog. Typically, you can find these RSS symbols or text links in your browser window, on the sides of the website page, or on the bottom of the page. The publishers of the websites and blogs really want people to subscribe to their RSS, so they will make it very easy for you to find the subscription links. RSS Readers Now, because nothing is ever standard on the web like dealing with different operating systems, Mac vs. PC, and different flavored browsers like Internet Explorer, AOL, Safari, and Firefox, the way to get an RSS reader will be dependent on what browser you like to use, and how accessible you’d like your RSS list(s) to be. http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html
RSS aggregator programs
Think of an RSS aggregator as just a web browser for RSS content. RSS aggregators automatically check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it is possible to keep track of changes to multiple websites without needing to tediously read and re-read each of the websites yourself. They detect the additions and present them all together to you in a compact and useful manner. If the title and description of an item are of interest, the link can be used to quickly bring the related web page up for reading.
Here is a screen shot of an RSS aggregator in action. On the left is a list of the RSS feeds being monitored, along with an indication of the number of unread items in each feed in parenthesis. On the right are the details of the most recent items in a selected RSS feed (in this case, the New York Times).
Get Dropbox -
2 free gigs of online storage that keeps documents synched between two or more computers - Tech Integration Coaches use this tool - also allows for sharing documents
SkyDrive - 7 free gigs of storage for photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.
Google Drive -
5 free gigs of storage that allows synching between computers and/or other devices. Share files with exactly who you want and edit them together, from any device.
CX.com -
10 free gigs of storage that you can access from any PC, Mac, Android, Kindle Fire, etc. Share files within groups or just with individuals. Apps for devices
Pulling Information to Your Personal Learning Network
iGoogle is a start page tool where you can aggregate all the Google resources you use on your online desktop, eg gMail, Google Calendar.
Quick Start-
Go to Google. In the upper left-hand corner, there should be a link that says "iGoogle".
Click on it and it will take you to the iGoogle section. There, you will see various different boxes (i.e. news, weather, horoscope, etc).
You can move its contents by dragging the boxes around to wherever you like on the page.
If you look above the boxes, you should see a link called "Add a Tab". You can click it, give it a name, and decide whether to check or uncheck the "I'm feeling lucky" box.
Click "Add Stuff>>", located on the right side near the top. This will take you to a page where you can search for add-ons in different categories, such as Fun & Games and Sports.
Search a criteria. For instance, "Bengals" under the Sports category; various items will appear. If you want "Yahoo! Sports - NFL# - Cincinnati Bengals News", click on the link. This allows you to view information about it, as well as a screenshot for some. If, after viewing this, you want to add it to your page, click the button that says "Add it now".
Once you get it on your page, you can always remove it by clicking the x in the top left corner. You can also add some useful gadgets like calendar, countdown, to do lists, email, gas price check, etc.
Tips
Most of the time when you type in a name for your tab, it will automatically add content, depending on the tab's name. Uncheck the "I'm feeling lucky" box if you'd rather start from scratch and add your own gadgets.
Use the "Add stuff" page wisely. The search bar at the top let's you find stuff to add to your page more easily. Also, you can click the "Add by URL" link to its right to add a link of your own. That way, you'll be able to add an RSS feed of a site or blog that you like that you wouldn't be able to find in the search results.
A fairly new feature is Themes. The link is on the right side of the page, next to Add Stuff. When you click on this, it will come up with a box with several different themes to choose from. Click on the one you like and save it. You can then enter your zip code/hometown, and it will make the theme and colors change according to the time of day.
Warnings
Either create an account or don't delete your cookies. Otherwise, everything will be lost and it will go back to the classic Google page.
Don't add too many things to your page; it will load really slowly and increase the chance of browser crashing. Instead, you can create multiple tabs (e.g. one for games, another for RSS feeds, etc).
http://www.netvibes.com/
is a custom made home page solution that allows you to create a personalized page filled with content that you find useful.
A few key features to highlight:
Tabs
Netvibes allows you to create tabs. They're similar to file folders that you might have on your desktop. Like a file folder, you can name each tab anything you want. Which means that depending on your preferences you could have tabs that correspond to:
Topic areas that interest you
Work vs. personal items
Projects that you're working on
Different job functions
Advocacy areas for your organization
Events
Modules and Resources for Each Tab
Within each tab you can include:
RSS Feeds--virtually anything is available via RSS. You can subscribe to newspapers and magazines, blogs, Google Alerts, de.licio.us and Technorati tags, updates to wikis, videos, podcasts, Flickr photos, To Do lists (like "Remember the Milk"). Just about any online resource you can imagine is available through RSS.
URLs--depending on how you're using your tabs, you can have URLs to project sites, commonly used sites, documents, etc.
"Sticky Notes"--With the "Web Notes" feature, you can create a digital Post-It note to stick anywhere in your Netvibes. This means you can "jot down" ideas and reminders and include them in your tabs.
Access to email and social networking, including IM, Meebo, MySpace, Facebook
Calendars
Maps and weather
http://my.yahoo.com/ My Yahoo! combines your favorite parts of Yahoo! and the Web into one place.
Personal Learning Network - PLN Workshop
A Personal Learning Network connects teachers to other individuals worldwide who can offer support, advice, feedback, and collaboration opportunities. It allows teachers to collect information from various websites and access it in one organized area so they can stay up-to-date on the latest information in their field. These tools work for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week. No longer do you have to perform the same search multiple times over the course of days, weeks, or months. These tools are always running this search for you and delivering to you any additions found. As your interests and requirements change so too can you edit your personal reference book.| | Introduction | Social Bookmarking | Blog / News Readers | Cloud / Virtual File Storage | Pulling Information to Your Personal Learning Network
Professional Development Standards for This Training
ISTE NETS 2008 for Teachers1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers:
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. Teachers:
- a. demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations.
- d. model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.
Back to TopCourse Outline
Back to Top
Introduction
What is a PLN?Why do teachers need to understand PLNs?
Social Bookmarking
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.
Things you can do with Delicious: Bookmark any site on the Internet, and get to it from anywhere
Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you're not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.
Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.
Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web
See what's hot with Delicious users by checking out our popular tags. By looking at popular bookmarks for a tag, you'll be able to discover the most interesting bookmarks on the topics you're most interested in. Browse bookmarks on just about anything from the best programming tips to the most popular travel sites, all in an easy to read format.
Create account:
Username required and must be unique
Password: alphanumeric (remember it)
After you complete account creation one option is:
Import bookmarks?? It will pull all the bookmarks from your computer and import them into Delicious for you
Help > Need Tools - puts the icons on your menu bar for easy access
Tags
Tags are one-word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks on Delicious to help you organize and remember them. Tags are a little bit like keywords, but you choose them yourself and they do not form a hierarchy
http://delicious.com/help/getStarted
Go to the link above for complete "getting started" directions
http://tommarch.com/classportals/2008/05/delicious/
Check this link for creating Group Delicious Bookmarks
Another social bookmarking site used often by educators - allows you to "markup" or annotate right on top of websites you find and bookmark so that your notes go with your bookmark
For a guided tour:
http://www.diigo.com/learn_more
This is the simplest and most useful web application to use! Access your bookmark anywhere and anytime.
http://only2clicks.com/
Tutorial
Alllows teachers to share websites, games, videos, images, etc. by creating online webmixes. Webmixes can be published and shared with colleagues, students, and parents. Teachers and students build a virtual textbook of sorts.
http://edu.symbaloo.com/
1. Learn how to make a tile on your SymbalooEDU webmix:
http://www.schooltube.com/video/7c86ffe06d16d08f65a8/
2. How to embed your SymbalooEDU webmix on your webpage:
http://www.zotero.org/
Yet another bookmarking tool that allows scholarly citations for research / presentations
For a guided tour:
http://www.zotero.org/support/quick_start_guide
Blog / News Readers
How to:
http://www.andywibbels.com/flash/google_reader.htm
To add a subscribe button to your toolbar:
-sign into Google Reader
-go to Settings, Reader ettings
-click on Goodies
-scroll to the bottom of the page
-drag subscribe to toolbar
This is a webpage that brings all the information you have requested to you on a continuous basis. Items like blogs, web searches, newspapers, delicious bookmarks from selected people and more are updated on your page as new material goes online.
Elementary Blog Examples to follow:
http://www.delicious.com/Sdavenport931/rss
http://www.delicious.com/BakerDM/rss
(Really Simple Syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. Will Richardson has included a page in his blog fully explaining RSS.
RSS in Plain English by Common Craft
The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?”
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that?
Suppose you have 50 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. Going to visit each website and blog everyday could take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 50 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. What a time saver!
That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. In a moment, I will describe how to get an RSS Reader.
Subscribing to RSS feeds
But first, to “subscribe” to a website or blog’s RSS feed simply means that you are telling that website or blog, “Yes please. Send me your story headlines.” It’s like subscribing to a magazine or newsletter. Instead of getting a magazine or email, you will just get a list of headlines sent to your RSS reader. If the headline looks interesting to you, all you have to do is click on the headline and you’ll be sent to the whole story.
In order to subscribe to a website or blog’s RSS, all you have to do is click on an RSS symbol like one of those shown in the diagram above, or a text link of the words “Subscribe to our RSS feed” on the website or blog. Typically, you can find these RSS symbols or text links in your browser window, on the sides of the website page, or on the bottom of the page. The publishers of the websites and blogs really want people to subscribe to their RSS, so they will make it very easy for you to find the subscription links.
RSS Readers
Now, because nothing is ever standard on the web like dealing with different operating systems, Mac vs. PC, and different flavored browsers like Internet Explorer, AOL, Safari, and Firefox, the way to get an RSS reader will be dependent on what browser you like to use, and how accessible you’d like your RSS list(s) to be.
http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html
Aggregators
http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.htmlThink of an RSS aggregator as just a web browser for RSS content. RSS aggregators automatically check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it is possible to keep track of changes to multiple websites without needing to tediously read and re-read each of the websites yourself. They detect the additions and present them all together to you in a compact and useful manner. If the title and description of an item are of interest, the link can be used to quickly bring the related web page up for reading.
Here is a screen shot of an RSS aggregator in action. On the left is a list of the RSS feeds being monitored, along with an indication of the number of unread items in each feed in parenthesis. On the right are the details of the most recent items in a selected RSS feed (in this case, the New York Times).
Cloud / Virtual File Storage
2 free gigs of online storage that keeps documents synched between two or more computers - Tech Integration Coaches use this tool - also allows for sharing documents
7 free gigs of storage for photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.
5 free gigs of storage that allows synching between computers and/or other devices. Share files with exactly who you want and edit them together, from any device.
10 free gigs of storage that you can access from any PC, Mac, Android, Kindle Fire, etc. Share files within groups or just with individuals. Apps for devices
Pulling Information to Your Personal Learning Network
is a start page tool where you can aggregate all the Google resources you use on your online desktop, eg gMail, Google Calendar.
Tips
Warnings
is a custom made home page solution that allows you to create a personalized page filled with content that you find useful.
Tabs
Netvibes allows you to create tabs. They're similar to file folders that you might have on your desktop. Like a file folder, you can name each tab anything you want. Which means that depending on your preferences you could have tabs that correspond to:
Modules and Resources for Each Tab
Within each tab you can include:
My Yahoo! combines your favorite parts of Yahoo! and the Web into one place.